Conventionally, the ultrasonic diagnostic device receives a reflective wave of an ultrasonic wave transmitted from a plurality of transducers included in the probe into a living body by the probe. Then, the ultrasonic diagnostic device images a target to be measured by processing the received reflective wave. At that time, the beam forming is performed in the ultrasonic diagnostic device. The beam forming is a process to individually control a timing at which each transducer transmits/receives the ultrasonic wave based on a delay amount of the ultrasonic wave.
There is a probe, an arrangement position of each transducer of which is fixed. In the ultrasonic diagnostic device including such probe, the delay amount of each transducer for performing the beam forming is calculated in advance based on the arrangement position of each transducer for each probe to be stored in a storage device in the ultrasonic diagnostic device as a fixed value. When the beam forming is performed, a corresponding delay amount is read from the storage device to be used for each probe.
In order to reduce a volume in the storage device which stores such delay amount, there is a method of calculating the delay amount each time the beam forming is performed based on the arrangement position of the transducer in the probe (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
In contrast, there is a method in which a plurality of probes, the arrangement positions of which are not fixed, is connected and image data obtained by each probe are synthesized to be imaged (for example, refer to Patent Document 2). In this method, an angle sensor is provided on a connecting portion of the probes and a relative positional relationship between the transducers included in the probes is calculated based on an angle detected by the angle sensor.